Wednesday, October 26, 2005

How would Jesus feel about my blog?

Some of you may have noticed that I rarely get political in my blog.

I consider myself intelligent, but I refuse to opine on topics of which I am uninformed. And in the past six or so years I have grown more and more grossly uninformed on an ever-broadening range of topics.

But if there is one thing I know about, it is Catholic school. And I'm pretty familiar with the responsibilities of being a parent. And I even know a thing or two about blogging.

So I just couldn't pass up the chance to comment on this news story about a Catholic school in New Jersey that has ordered its students to remove their personal blogs from the Internet.

The school sites the students' own safety as the impetus behind this directive.

Bullshit, I say.

If they were so concerned about the cyber safety of their students they would educate them on the subject. Or educate their parents to be responsible for their children. Not decree an immediate cease of an activity that is both widespread and natural amongst their age group.

Oh wait. What the hell am I thinking? This is a Catholic school! They believe in teaching (drum roll please)...

ABSTINENCE.

So forget about teaching kids to wear a cyber information condom.

I just have to shake my head.

Near the end of the article, the legal director for the ACLU of New Jersey states, "The rights of students at private schools are far different than those of public schools because administrators at public schools are agents of government. That's not the case here."

He's right to say that private school students do not have the same protection of rights as their public school counterparts. I faced that quite a few times back in Catholic school myself.

But that is only true at school! Or during school events. Or in school-sponsored media.

They're talking about My Space and Xanga and Blogger and the freaking Internet here people. These kids' rights are being trampled on. If it were my kids, well, I'd be raising the freaking roof off the chapel over there.

Ah, Catholic school. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I hope I don't have to send my kids to one. (It may come to that considering some of the bases to which we may soon move.) But if I do, Sr. Mary Katherine So-and-So is going to wish I had never walked through the door. I'm going to be watching them with an eagle eye.

Next thing you know, they'll find a way to label blogging as a mortal sin. And then bloggers can join the gays, and the boys who masturbated, and the girls who gave it up too soon in our own special place in hell.